The Greatest Scientists in the Universe share the same thought about time.* Time, they say, is an utterly inexplicable mess. Which is true, but doesn't stop them from trying to explain it, mostly because of the way people's brain work.
There are all sorts of brains around the Universe.
On planet Thatcher, for example, the members of the Churchill race (which, by an inexplicable coincidence**, has the same name as a british Prime Minister***), have the strangest sort of brain in the whole universe. It consists of a yellow liquid which tends to evaporate by the ears when exposed to high heat. The fact that the climate on Thatcher is essentially of the tropical type explains the early extinction of that race.
But what is shared by the brains of most of the species in the Universe is that incredible thirst for curiosity. The brain, in most of the cases, wants to stay busy. The brain needs to think. And so, those who don't try to ignore that thirst, inevitably end up trying to appease it by attempting to acquire a certain comprehension of all sorts of unexplainable things because only these things have the power to keep them thinking forever.
You cannot really switch off the thirst.
It is a common belief that turning on the television is one way of turning off your brain. It is of course completely wrong. What turning on the tv really does is turning off the pressure in your bladder until that well-known moment when the suspense in the film is at its apogee, so you can't possibly make your urge coincide with the advertisement and miss an important bit which no-one will explain to you during the advertisement because they are going to the lavatory and no-one will explain to you during the film either because it would make everyone miss some important bits.
Television is evil. All Great Scientists agree on that fact too.
So, they say, time is an utterly inexplicable mess.
In their neverending search for information about time, all these Great Scientists found only one certainty. This certainty is quite strange and inexplicable itself. It states that at the beginning of time is a robot.
Those who tried to explain that certainty eventually gave up and switched off their brain with a gulp of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
Every single one of them, except perhaps me. I will try to explain.
The robot was looking at the new-born Universe with great severity. Thing began to happen. Tiny things, big things, all the same. History, or rather Prehistory had just been brought to existence.
''So this is time.'', the robot said. ''There's nothing exciting about it.''.
Many scientists would have disagreed this. But none did exist at these times.
* They also share the same taste for capital letters.
** Which doesn't stop anyone from trying to explain it.
*** Totally unknown to them.